Our View: Common sense abounds — except in U.S. Senate

The two conservative senators who crafted the legislation that would have expanded background checks on gun purchases called it common sense to ensure that guns are more effectively kept from the hands of those who can't demonstrate responsible ownership.

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Posted Apr. 24, 2013 at 12:01 AM

Posted Apr. 24, 2013 at 12:01 AM

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The two conservative senators who crafted the legislation that would have expanded background checks on gun purchases called it common sense to ensure that guns are more effectively kept from the hands of those who can't demonstrate responsible ownership.

Common sense," said Harriet Beecher Stowe, "is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be."

"Seeing things as they are" suggests acknowledging how many guns are sold in this country through "straw purchases," for example, where someone who has passed a background check sells a gun privately to someone who hasn't — or who can't.

Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley argued that "expanded background checks would not have prevented Newtown. Criminals do not sub­mit to background checks." We're sorry, Senator, but that fails the common-sense test on two counts. First, by suggesting that the purpose of expanded background checks is specifically to prevent events as horrifying as Newtown, and second, it fails in fact, as those criminals who exploit the straw-purchase system would find at least one less option in their pursuit of firearms.

Another failure in the Senate's rejection of expanded background checks is the willingness to ignore the biggest demographic of victims of gun violence, that is, the two-thirds of the 30,000 annual deaths that come at the hands of someone those victims knew or by suicide.

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul's assertion that the president has been using victims of gun violence as "props" is appallingly insensitive to this fact, and fails to see "things as they are."

The issue isn't about Second Amendment rights. It isn't primarily about preventing mass murders and it isn't about preventing home invasions perpetrated by criminals with illegally obtained firearms. The issue is about guns being available to people ill-equipped to handle them.

We have made the argument before and will continue to make it: The root problem of gun violence in America is the nation's insufficient commitment on many fronts to the mental health of its population. Prevention is cheaper than mitigation by any measure.

The second half of Stowe's definition of common sense calls for action, but electoral mathematics seems to be against another try in the Senate before 2016, which in this go-round failed by 6 votes to reach the 60 required for passage.

We would suggest several options for common-sense action. For one, NRA members who see the value of background checks — a strong majority, according to two polls from January and March — should tell the organization's leadership of their disappointment with the unscrupulous tactics used in its opposition to the Senate bill, and ask whose money was behind that opposition. Likewise, constituents of the 46 senators who voted down the bill need to ask their legislators similar questions: How do lax background checks satisfy the common sense test, unless the argument is re-election and lobbyist dollars?

Responsible gun ownership is enhanced — not threatened — by expanded background checks. And it seems to us that Second Amendment rights are made more secure — not less — by a responsible gun-owning citizenry.